"You two are probably the coolest Mormons I know"

This week's shout out goes out to my grandma and my uncle. I don't look at the calendar anymore because time is going too fast and I forgot... sorry!

Transfer calls happened! Drum roll......

I'm going to Northgate 2nd! Back to Walnut Creek... my companion is Sister Vai'ingina from... Tonga! Tongan #4. And here's the kicker. We are part time bike. I must really need to lose weight or something... haha. But for real, I'm not sure if I'm angry or happy because I wasn't really seeking this. And we're shotgunning, which means that we are both brand new to this area. It's exciting! I'm going to miss the people in this ward, but the Lord says it's time to move on. I'm excited.Sister Lutui is going to the Golden Gate ward across the bay! And they are taking sisters out of this area. I'm totally bummed they're splitting us though. She's the bomb. 

This week has been pretty interesting. We stayed in for various reasons, but we still managed to get a lot done! Met with some of my favorite families in the ward. 

I don't have a ton of time today, but I have learned so much from being here. It's been really humbling to me and I imagine it's been a test for everyone. I've learned how much love the Lord has for everyone, because I can feel Him giving me some of His vision for this ward and helping me learn to be more Christ-like. It's been really amazing. And this ward has taken care of us like their own children, and I'm so grateful for our members. They're awesome. But I've really grown, and now I'm ready to start working like crazy again. 

Love you all

Sister Kwan

"Oh! So you're as old as the temple?"

This week's shout out goes out to all the troops. Because I have no concept of time, I completely blanked on 9/11 and I was questioning why everyone was praying for the troops. 

This week was pretty crazy. First of all, ran into Mackenzy from the Valley Forge stake. How cool was that? We saw her across the parking lot and I was like "Who's that girl?" And she gets closer and I'm like "I think I know her." And we make eye contact and she starts running and I started racking my brain like crazy. And then she was like "JEANNIE!!!!!" and I was like "Oh shoot! Hey! I'm a missionary now!" and she started laughing and then everything clicked. It blew my mind! 

I don't really have too much time to write this week. I'll try and remember the big things that happened... It was really hot again. It's September, that's not right.

So our car was super messed up. We ran the tires down to the wire, so we had to go get it fixed. We decided we should try and be effective with our time, and we ended up spending half the day with the Antioch 1st sisters. They're pretty cool. We went to a lesson with them, and it was super interesting. Just because there was 4 of us and each of us has a different style of teaching. And their investigator was SUPER confused about everything. They were trying to teach him how to pray and here's how it went

Him: "Ok. So dear Heavenly Father... what am I doing Saturday?"

Sisters: "Thank him for things..."

Him: "Oh. There's 4 beautiful women sitting in front of me. What should I do?"

Sisters: "........keep going"

Him: "Should I get baptized? ......Yeah."

We couldn't contain our laughter anymore. He was so funny. Hopefully he will piece everything together so he can make the right decision! 

We did service at a festival in Oakley and we got a really good job. We stayed inside in the air conditioning and watched the art gallery. What we really ended up doing was helping this small girls with their lives. They came in and were telling us about how they like Drake and indian music and then we just sort of chatted with them. Kids these days. They left to go play so we were just chatting because NOBODY came inside, when suddenly they run in, and they're like "YELLOW SHIRTS! YELLOW SHIRTS! We need your help! We're going to die! I broke her sister's purse! She's going to kill us! Can you fix it??" So we did. And this is probably the best way to make friends, because they would not leave us after that haha. They were so cute. They were so open to everything, but we know their parents really wouldn't have been for it. But yeah, that's how you make friends in an hour. 

This week I've been thinking a lot about the choices we make. It's interesting, because when we make decisions, it tends to be pretty selfish. How will this benefit me? That's the question. But when you look at the big picture, everything has a much much greater impact. Our small decision will impact our future, even if it doesn't seem like it. Luckily, God understands this perspective and has given us the spirit to help us make the right choices. I know the spirit has been a great influence in my life and I'm grateful for it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here right now.

 

Love you all!

Sister Kwan

Ps- how about my future as a firefighter? No?

"His family used to call me Nacho... Nacho girlfriend...."

This week's shout out goes out to my great grandma

It's been a long week... lots of ups and downs. Me and Sister Lutui are doing super great. Reunited and it feels so good haha

First things first, Sandy will not be getting baptized :(( her mom wasn't totally on board. She really doesn't want to commit to coming back to church with her, even though Sandy is super excited for the primary program. It's disappointing. 

An update on the house with the spirits, since everyone's been asking me. We were all sitting there and we brought a priesthood holder with us. He offered the prayer, and he started off stumbling the way me and Sister Lutui did, but he finished strong and as he did, we could all feel the spirit over us. It was super cool. That is what we call the power of the priesthood. 

This was the week of super nasty services. We were cleaning a short sale house that had poop and pee all over the carpet. The microwave took an hour and a half to clean. The drawers took 3 hours and the fridge was ridiculous. It looked like someone had thrown up in it. Fast forward a couple days and we were invited to help some lady clean her house. Well, I imagine that house is what the first house looked like before they sold it. It was so nasty. And there were spiders everywhere and so I'd just be standing there trying to clean something. And then a spider would show up. Next minute, my shoe's off and I threw it at the spider. Super nasty. 

Well. I don't really have time for much else today... But here's a funny story. That's spiritual. The other night I had a dream. I'm sitting at this table in a red room. Me and Sister Lutui are still companions and we are sitting there with one of my friends and Sister Lutui's recent convert, Elijah. He lost his pinky and I was sitting there trying to put it back for him, but it doesn't really work like that. Sister Lutui told me she was going to shower. So I'm sitting there and suddenly my friends comes over and she goes, "You need to make a decision. Like in Mosiah 9." And I was like "Dude there is no way you read the Book of Mormon" and then I woke up. So I open to that chapter and I get absolutely nothing out of it. Fast forward and we had a super hard Sunday. I'm like here. Let's read Mosiah 9. And suddenly she gets all this inspiration. I bear witness that revelation comes in the oddest ways, but it will come. So hang on to it.

Love you all!
Sister Kwan

-insert humorous title here-

This week's shout out goes out to the activity day girls! Thanks so much for the package. The food was very much appreciated :) 

Leave it to America to create a holiday that has the word "labor" in the title, where we should all have the day off (ironically), but 75% of the population still works. 

People have said they've e-mailed me but I haven't gotten anything at all... so just know that if you sent me something and I haven't responded in a month, it's because I haven't gotten it. So re-send it! I don't know what's wrong with this e-mailing system but yeah. Do it. 

So, as of last Tuesday, me and Sister Lutui are companions again! It was kind of a shocker. I didn't have time to write about it last week so I didn't even bother haha. But I walked out of the temple and Sister Lutui and Sister Lepa were there and she goes "We're companions now." and I was like "Huh?" and then she told me what happened and I was like "Shoot you're actually serious aren't you" and so we have been together for a week. It's been an interesting adjusting period. But it's good to be back together :) she's awesome. 

Miracles, miracles, miracles... 

Sandy has a baptismal date! I went over with Sister Lutui and she came up with this metaphor for the gospel using "Plants VS Zombies" and she totally loved it. Then we talked about the questions she would need to answer and she said, "If I knew it was this easy, I would've gotten baptized when I was 8!" She's so cute. The only struggle is the rest of her family. We went to pick her up for church yesterday and she came out and said her family was going to bring her to church. It was kind of lame because they didn't even show up, but it's ok. We are just concerned that they will not be as supportive as we would like them to be. 

We did a ton of service these past couple weeks. We moved a bunch of people from their homes to storage units to pods to whatever. Lots of manual labor. These was this guy who asked us to weed for him. Little did we know that when he said "weed my yard" he meant Discovery Bay. But not actually. His house is on a hill and underneath there's a hill of rocks and then it's water. So I guess we were under the house on a hillside of rocks pulling weeds. It was kind of crazy. No one fell into the water. Not that we wanted to either, the water was nasty! 

Stopped and visited Janey. Right place right time BECAUSE she was like, "You know, I was just thinking this morning that I need to go to church. And I was asking my brothers if they had read the scriptures earlier today. And now you guys show up and you know. I really needed it." What a blessing. What a miracle. When things like that happen, you just want to go and bring the choirs back to sing for you. It was awesome. She was super happy. 

I'm just about out of things to say haha. Something I've been thinking about lately is the temple. It truly is a special place. The people of Oakland are so blessed to have one so close, and we are so lucky to almost have one in Philadelphia! It's great. I love it. 

Have a great week! Love you all.

Sister Kwan

I'm not dead, I swear!

This week's shout out goes out to the earthquake. Very timely. 

So I don't have very much time this week to e-mail because we went to the temple! What a blessing it truly is to have a temple so close. So blessed.

Speaking of earthquakes. We had 2 preparedness nights this week. Thursday and Saturday. And then Saturday night we felt the earthquake! Well, it woke my companion up and she was like "Uhhh why is Sister Kwan shaking my bed." But I was not the source of it. It was an earthquake. But it didn't do anything haha

Uh so I really don't have time to write anything more but there were so many miracles! Someone remind me to write about it next week. 

Love you all! 
Sister Kwan

I don't have a creative title for this week. (8/18)

This week's shout out goes out to hot pockets. I decided to leave you for about a year and now that I've gone back, I'm not sure why I did.

As always, it's interesting adjusting to a new companion. Sister Fiefia is older than me and she is from Tonga. Legitimately from Tonga. She keeps telling me that my future holds a lot of Tongans since this is my 3rd companion from there, but we will see. She got super sick this week and so we haven't been out much and now I'm starting to feel kind of weird. Hopefully I stay strong haha

We met with a surprising amount of people this week! More than we ever have before.

Had a birthday party for our favorite Hawaiian lady who's not actually Hawaiian but loves it there. We sang Tongan hymns and ate cake. It was kind of awesome, and she was crying. The spirit was there and it made everyone really happy. And then at the end, they danced for us! She promised that she wouldn't dance for anyone (Well. She promised Sis Sotele that she would dance at her wedding) but she broke that promise because she really enjoyed us taking time out of our day to wish her a happy birthday. She is the sweetest lady.

The same day, we managed to have 2 dinners and 3 desserts. I need to go on a diet of some sort. But we all know that's impossible on a mission... But I was impressed by how much we ate. I was dying by the end of the night though, but yeah. These people take time to make food to feed us, I just feel bad... not eating it...

So there's this one less active lady that we've been visiting and we've been getting weird vibes from her house. Like a couple weeks ago, me and Sis Sotele were there and we had felt like a spirit had followed us from her house. It scared the pants off me. That day I learned how to cast out spirits and also how quickly God responds to us when we are panicking. We just kind of shrugged it off as a one time thing, but this time with Sis Fiefia, her and the member we brought were suddenly struck with sickness. It was the strangest thing. And we talked with our member about it, and he was like "You felt it too?" And so we are planning on going back and blessing the home. Our member had home taught the last family that lived there, and he mentioned some really bad feelings in that home. It was pretty crazy.

And then there's Lynda. What a lady. We were there and her neighbor Sharon, who's a less active member, was visiting too. They tend to argue whenever we go over, and it's always interesting. The topics of discussion aren't usually gospel, but we can make them switch it over when it's time. But this is where we had the best conversation of the week. So they're just sitting there fighting, Sharon's complaining about how hard her life is, and Lynda is not having it.

Lynda: "Oh, is that how you got diabetes then?"

Sharon: "No, I got it from my neighbor!"

Everyone: ".................."

Lynda: "You can not contract diabetes that way, don't you ever say that to anyone ever again."

Sharon: "No, it's because he caused me stress!"

Us: "HAHAHAHAHAHA"

Honestly, I haven't laughed that hard in awhile. Old ladies are the best.

So there's this new video out
http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages?v=3701964025001 

Super awesome. Highly recommend it. I was thinking about it the other day and you know. We truly are blessed with this knowledge that we have. I think about how God loves us and how sometimes we look for Him in all the wrong places. It's like going to McDonald's and looking for clothes. You just can't do it. You might not necessarily know how He will reveal himself to you or what will happen, but you have to be open to any sort of solution, not just one that you seek. The Lord loves you.

Take care! Love you all :)

Sister Kwan

Too many feels (8/11/2014)

This week's shout out goes out to the Ponce family. They aren't actually less active, but they pretend like they are so they can hang out with us haha

I'm super bummed out right now. The Lord has decided to split up me and Sister Sotele and given me another Tongan companion and keep me here. Obviously it'll be good but. I'm super sad.

This week we met with a lot of the ward members since a bunch of our appointments fell through again. Sometimes I feel like we're drying to draw water from a well with a bucket full of holes. In this ward, we deal with a lot of less actives who really don't feel welcome at all, whether they are less active or even active. It makes me really sad. We aren't entirely sure what to do, because this has been an ongoing problem and it doesn't seem like anyone's taking any steps to solve it. For me, it just goes to show the dangers of getting comfortable. When you're comfortable, you don't feel the need to change, and it makes everyone else uncomfortable. We will see. 

We got to do some really great service this week- pulling weeds, killing black widows, it was crazy. I might've mentioned it last week but I'm too lazy to click back and look. The yard looks awesome now. It's crazy that sometimes you can actually see the fruits of your labors! 

I also learned how to can tomatoes this week. It is a LONG process. But now I am a professional tomato peeler. Haha but that's all I did for 2 hours. It was long, but super fun. And by the end of it, I looked like I had killed someone. The sister we did it for really appreciated it though, we took care of 30 pounds of tomatoes! It was pretty awesome. 

Well this week I was thinking a lot about the choices we make. A member at church on Sunday asked us "What would happen if there were no consequences to our actions?" And it kind of blew my mind. I think a lot of what's happening today is because there's no IMMEDIATE repercussions for the things we do. It's not like touching a stove. It's a slow process sometimes. But when we feel like we're "getting away with things," there's no incentive to change. What we have to recognize, is that for everything we do, there ARE consequences. Which is kind of scary. And growing up, I always hated the word "consequence." It was always so evil. But now I realize that if there were no consequences, there would be no change, and that's exactly why we are here. 

Take care! Love you all!

Sister Kwan